The state of things

It's been a long time since I posted, and for excellent reason, though I say so myself. I have a full-time job now! I'm a newspaper reporter, which is delightful since I actually (gasp!) get to work in my chosen and studied field of writing. Despite the hour-or-so drive to work and the sometimes-several-hours of driving to and from assignments, I very much enjoy the work. Someone asked me the other day what exactly I do. I said, "Well. I decide what is newsworthy. I go to the news. I interview people and take pictures. I write the stories in InDesign and deal with the photos in PhotoShop, and I upload them to a server." It's much more manageable than it sounds, mostly because the crew is quite laid back and gives reporters some hard-core freedom to cover whatever we find interesting, on our own timetable. I'm very lucky to be working in this setting as opposed to a traditional daily paper. Of the four papers owned by the company, three come out once a week and one comes out twice a week. It's a good pace: always enough work, rarely too much for sanity. Also, I love interacting with all the different people I write about: professional magicians, children taking art lessons, librarians, owners of art centers and bakeries, businesspeople, politicians. Even town council meetings are surprisingly eventful and easy to find the story in. I've gotten a lot more comfortable making cold calls on the phone to find out when an event is or some other tidbit of information. We crack ourselves up at the office, and I should soon get a computer with all the right software so I can do some composing at home. NPR/WHQR is my new best friend, with all the driving I do, so I'm always learning something illuminating. It's a sweet deal overall. Since I write so much for work, posts here might become more sparse and will probably include some links to pieces I've written for the papers. But do keep checking, and I will do my utmost not to let this blog lapse.